Leça Swimming Pools

Built between 1961 and 1966 on the rocky shore beside a coastal road, these ocean pools use the natural rock formations to hold sea water, extending the beach into a sequence of basins.

The changing rooms and cafe sit low beneath the road, built of raw concrete walls and dark timber under flat roofs. Visitors leave the street and descend into a dim, compressed sequence of walls and passages, where slots of light and glimpses of the horizon prepare them for the sudden openness of the sea.

Concrete walls are kept to a minimum, placed only where needed to complete the enclosure of the pools, so the boundary between the built and the natural is hard to read. The work became one of the touchstones of the architect’s approach to landscape.